Three risks of poor user adoption of your sourcing software

In today’s sourcing climate, procurement leaders are making it a priority to improve their team’s efficiency and effectiveness. Any effort to improve their team’s capabilities is inevitably tied to technology and software.

These leaders are turning to the latest generation of sourcing software to help achieve their goals and streamline their activities and workflows. These modern software platforms have the potential of supercharging your team’s performance and decision outcomes.

However, that’s only if your stakeholders are on board and are actually using your software.

If your end users — whether they are your buyers, evaluators, or executives — are not adopting your chosen software, your results (and your sourcing strategy) are at serious risk.

Below are three risks you face when your platform suffers from poor user adoption:

1. Unrealized potential (or worse)

You can have the perfect software, but you won’t see the full benefits promised by the software if no one is using it. When you’re under pressure to deliver quality decisions with limited resources, this unrealized potential can have a devastating impact on your ability to meet your sourcing targets and objectives.

Not only can your performance plateau, it may even deteriorate. This is especially true if your new software was introduced to fix poor or declining performance in the first place.

2. Eroded return on investment

The benefits of implementing a new sourcing software are often based on the resource gains from using it. This can be reflected in a variety of ways:

Time savings through greater efficiency

Putting more spend under management, or lowering purchasing thresholds

Saving money on each project run (straight cost reduction)

More strategic decision-making (contributing to organizational goals)

Ultimately, these factors add up to the overall return on investment for the platform.

You’ve identified the ways a new technology can help boost your team and your results, you’ve made the internal case, and calculated the benefits you expect to receive. Yet if your end users are not adopting your platform, the ROI is effectively zero.

3. Bad optics

The newest generation of procurement and sourcing platforms can act as a value multiplier and are a worthwhile investment. So when the implementation of these tools are successful, the benefits can be immediate and significant — both strategically and financially.

On the other hand, poor user adoption leads to missed opportunities and unmet expectations, the optics can look bad if not handled or solved relatively quickly.

This is especially difficult to take when you consider your motivation to improve performance — and how avoidable poor user adoption can be.

Better practices for driving user adoption

Whether you’re launching a new sourcing platform or facing issues achieving the levels of end user engagement and adoption, there are a number of best practices you can follow to help drive better user adoption of your sourcing software.